


Just Another Brick in the Wall

by StormLeviosa



Series: Batfam Week 2020 [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Basically, Batfam Week 2020, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Dynamics (DCU), Brotherly Bonding, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Damian Wayne is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is Robin, Gen, Happy Ending, Reverse Robins AU, Role Reversal, everything is backwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23108896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: Dick has three older brothers. He doesn't think any of them like him much. This will all change.
Series: Batfam Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658641
Comments: 3
Kudos: 288
Collections: Tales from the Cave





	Just Another Brick in the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reverse batfam au for batfam week 2020. It also fills one of my bingo prompts. So that's cool.  
> It's another one written in only a few hours so I'm sorry for the typos (I've been at a uni sports competition all day and only got back three hours ago, if that).

Dick tried to like his new brothers, really, he did. But it was hard when one of them was estranged and no one talked about except to shake their heads sadly, one of them wouldn’t talk to him and was scary intense, and the other was just weird. He’d never met Tim and everyone said he was dead but they also talked about him in present tense (and Dick knew his tenses now) just enough that he knew that wasn’t true. He’d met Damian exactly once and didn’t want a repeat. Damian was terrifying and very obviously didn’t like Dick much. Jason still lived in the manor and Dick saw him every day but Jason was plain weird in a way Dick couldn’t explain. He liked school. He had a knife. The day Dick had arrived, Jason had chattered at him for an hour about some massive old book Dick had never heard of before he realised Dick had no idea what he was talking about and just...disappeared. Bruce told him that it would come in time, but Dick wasn’t so sure.

The Joker kidnapped Jason. No one was sure why or how. Jason wasn’t a vigilante like the others (he hadn’t allowed him to put on a costume after what happened to Tim, bright and clever Tim who had done everything exactly right and still hadn’t made it out when he went to rescue his parents). Jason was completely normal. Jason was gone. Bruce had spent frantic hours trying to find him, trying to juggle his investigations as Batman and his communications with the GCPD. The press hadn’t gotten wind of what had happened yet, thank God, but it wouldn’t be long and then no one knew what would happen. The Joker liked a spectacle. While no one but the Waynes and the police were watching, he’d maybe let him go. If the press were watching and waiting, his actions couldn’t be predicted. Bruce was playing the part of panicked father well (it wasn’t an act; he really was that terrified) but Batman was still just as cold and calculating as ever. Damian, Nightwing, showed up and raged at everyone for not acting fast enough, for letting him get taken, for not training him for this. Dick hid. He didn’t want to get dragged into anything and he had his own plans.

He’d overheard Batman on the phone to the Commissioner. He knew where Jason was being kept. He knew Batman wasn’t going to do anything just yet, preferring to watch and wait while his new brother suffered. He knew Damian was right that they needed to act fast. Dick had a costume in his closet, stained with blood, and skills that he couldn’t use anymore. He knew what he had to do.

Amusement Mile was much further from the manor than Dick had imagined. He took a bus, then another bus, then walked (ran) and got hopelessly lost before he found it. He crept through the abandoned rides warily. It would be stupid to get complacent and become another hostage. There was a circus tent and the warm red and yellow cloth felt like home. He wriggled under the edge of the tent just how his mom always told him not to because he’d ruin it. There was still sand and straw beneath his feet, still towering wooden seats, still even a light rig and trapeze. He saw Jason tied to the tall pole in the centre of the ring, the Joker standing over him menacingly. The trapeze was right there. He wouldn’t even cast a shadow. Centripetal force, an arch trajectory: he’d hit him so much harder. He scampered up the trapeze, unhooked the bar, tugged the rope gently, blocked out his family’s screams. Maths and equations ran through his head. The trapeze was all about maths and equations and he’d have to let go and the lowest point and somersault at just the right angle to hit the ground with just the right amount of speed to roll and not become a pancake (not become a broken mass of limbs and blood spattered across the sand. Dick Grayson knew too well what happened when trapeze went wrong). Dick Grayson may have been a prodigy, but he was still only nine and still had a lot to learn. He wasn’t always quick with his calculations. But the Joker was standing over Jason and raising a crowbar to hit him again and Jason wasn’t moving and Dick wasn’t losing another family member at the circus. He leapt.

In the end it didn’t matter all that much that Dick was ready to throw himself into battle for his brother. Nightwing was lying in wait and jumped in as soon as Dick did, pushing him out of the fight with Jason at his side. They ran and hid. They pretended not to hear the Joker shrieking and laughing and gurgling, with fear or pain or sick pleasure they weren’t sure. Finally, Nightwing returned to them, wiping blood from his sword. It was an ominous message. He took them home to Bruce and Bruce didn’t even complain when Damian told him the Joker was dead, just enveloped them all in a hug and pretended he wasn’t crying. 

Robin got one night a week with Nightwing, and one night a month with the Red Hood - when he was sane, which was most of the time now but still a tentative thing. Damian crouched next to him on a rooftop and taught him when to be rougher and ruder than Robin was meant to be, when someone was too far gone to be saved and too dangerous to be left out on the streets, when someone was a victim of poor circumstance and just another person to be saved, when the world was grey instead of black and white. They got on better like this and Dick found he liked Damian’s sarcastic wit and steadfast morals. Tim skulked on the edges of his patrol and taught him that Bruce was sometimes wrong, that sometimes the perfect moment to act was before you had a plan, that the most dangerous weapon is the mind not the fists or feet. Dick lapped up all their lessons. Bruce hated it. But Bruce hated everything. Either way, he’d wanted them to get along, told Dick it would come in time. Dick hadn’t believed him at the time but now he did. The Wayne family was whole once more.


End file.
